from him how to put into words the longings with which the sea filled his heart.

A handsome lad he must have been, with the proud bearing that he never lost; tall, active, and well-knit in frame, with long straight nose, dark eyes, and thick, dark hair.

Perhaps his gifts were too many to make him altogether successful in life, but certainly few men have ever lived who possessed such versatility of genius.

He was both sailor and soldier; explorer, in a sense far beyond that of a mere adventurer; statesman, poet, historian, and alchemist; so manysided is his life, that it is almost bewildering to try to see it as a whole!

His ideas were in advance of his Age, and he had the misfortune to live into the reign of the Scotch James, by whom such a nature as his could never have been understood.

At the age of fourteen Walter Raleigh went to Oxford, and studied there at Oriel College, and probably also at Christ Church. Anthony à Wood tells us that Raleigh, being "strongly advanced by academical learning at Oxford, under the care of an excellent tutor, became the ornament of the juniors, and a proficient in oratory and philosophy."

From Oxford he went abroad, and fought in

K

France under the banner of the Huguenots, and later in the Netherlands, and after some time spent in London, at the Court, he went on one of Humphrey Gilbert's expeditions to America in 1578.

Two years later he led a band of a hundred men to join in the subjugation of Munster, which was being attempted by the ministers of the Queen in the high-handed style of the day. Elizabeth was alarmed at the Irish having received help from Spain, and the result was the terrible massacre of the Spanish garrison of Smerwick, at which Raleigh was present and in which he assisted.

But a pleasanter feature in his Irish life than the harsh measures which he always advocated towards the Queen's foes was his friendship with his great contemporary, the poet Edmund Spenser, who had come to Ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy, Earl Grey, and whom now Raleigh met for the first time.

Men were both poets and soldiers at that time, and it is a curious contrast to think of Raleigh and Spenser discussing such themes as the "Faerie Queene" and "Colin Clout" in the intervals of doing their best to exterminate the wretched peasant population of Munster.

There were no half measures in the warfare of Elizabeth's time.

On Raleigh's return to Court his favour with the Queen increased rapidly. Among the personal tastes he shared with her was that of extravagance in dress, and even among the gorgeous figures of that Court he shone conspicuous in gold and jewellery, wearing even upon his shoes gems of priceless value.

Some of the tales of his intercourse with the exacting Virgin Queen are none the less suggestive that they are not quite authentic. The best known, as given by Fuller, is how "Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Raleigh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth." Whether accurate or not, this is just one of the pretty deeds of personal devotion by which the great men of the day were always ready to feed that most insatiable quality, the vanity of Queen Elizabeth.

In another story which Fuller tells, the Queen got the better of her courtier, for finding a

legend, cut by Sir Walter with his diamond ring upon a window-pane, which said

"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"

Elizabeth inscribed beneath it the reply

"If thy heart fail thee, then climb not at all."

His ready wit, his brilliancy, and his wide general knowledge made him such a companion as the Queen most prized, and he was first favourite at Court for some years, and suffered, just as Sidney did, from the inconvenience of the position, by being kept close to the side of his mistress, when he would fain have been up and doing further afield.

In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert started on his last expedition, and Raleigh longed to accompany him, but was allowed by the Queen to do no more than fit up a ship, which he christened the Ark Raleigh. Sir Humphrey never came home. On the return voyage, bad as the weather was, he insisted on sailing in the smaller of his two vessels a mere boat, according to modern ideas, and quite unfit for the passage of the Atlantic: though a less prominent figure than Sidney on the grand stage of the time, his exit is hardly less fine. He was seen for the last time by the

crew of his larger ship, which survived, looking out undismayed over the face of the waters which were so soon to be his grave, and his last words have found an echo in the heart of many a shipwrecked mariner. "Be of good

heart, my friends! Heaven is as near us by sea as by land," cried Sir Humphrey, as they drifted to their death on the cold Newfoundland coast.

Gilbert had held letters patent from the Queen for the colonisation of the east coast of America, and these were continued to his half-brother, Raleigh, who sent out two ships during the next year to explore the coast above Florida. The land they discovered the Queen called Virginia, in honour of her own state of life, though she was at the time a somewhat mature virgin of fifty-one !

These discoveries were dear to the heart of Elizabeth, for in three different ways they ministered to her wishes: they carried her name and fame beyond the seas; they brought her tribute in gold, and pearls "as large as peas," and her love of wealth increased each year; and they led to continual infringement of the rights of her enemy the King of Spain, who was the other great colonising power of the day.